The fallacy of " krishnamurti said at the end of his life that nobody got it"

[James]

@O7007

Most of us get what k said.

I beg to differ. Even at the level of intellectual understanding - which is different from actual seeing - there is a lot of confusion about what Krishnamurti said.

And intellectual understanding is not the same thing as actual seeing, perception, insight. Most of us do not have very much insight, which is why our lives are the way they are.

@O7007

If K believed on that , he would have said that many many times but he never did. So that statement that nobody got is a false propaganda…

This thread has already explored the issue you speak about. Krishnamurti stated categorically that nobody had touched the energy he was referring to, nobody has undergone the radical transformation he talked about:

@James

K: They’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get into touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so that’s that.

As Drax said in reply to this:

@Drax

Quite an extraordinary statement that is. And makes a lot of sense too. Given that lot of charlatans or even deluded people who feel they have got it abound in K circles.

It does seem most people who think they have got it have got it only at an intellectual level.

[O7007]

From Public Talk 4, Saanen, 24 July 1969

“We don’t see the danger of nationalism or the danger of living with fear. We have got used to the danger of nationalism. It is part of our pleasure: the flag-waving, the shouting, the singing. They planted the American flag on the moon – just think of it! Or the Russian flag or your particular flag – it is the same thing. You don’t see the danger of it. It breeds war, antagonism, separation, economic differences, the rich and the poor, and all the rest of the agony of division, resistance, hate and war.”
Anybody who knows a little English gets what K says about the danger of nationalism .
We are not supposed to have the energy of K . We are what we are a conditioned beings.

[James]

@O7007

Anybody who knows a little English gets what K says about the danger of nationalism

The problem with resurrecting a dead thread is that the whole context has been forgotten. The context was whether anyone has been radically transformed in the way that Krishnamurti talked about. Krishnamurti said that nobody has had this transformation.

However, this doesn’t mean that nobody has grasped key aspects of what he taught - about nationalism, about the nature of thought, about the importance of being skeptical, etc. Everyone has grasped something or other of Krishnamurti’s teachings.

The main issue is that it remains mostly intellectual, and fragmentary. It isn’t total awareness, total insight into the whole. That’s all.

It doesn’t mean that one hasn’t grasped the fact that nationalism is dangerous.

[Twocents]

@James

1.I beg to differ. Even at the level of intellectual understanding - which is different from actual seeing - there is a lot of confusion about what Krishnamurti said.

2. And intellectual understanding is not the same thing as actual seeing, perception, insight. Most of us do not have very much insight, which is why our lives are the way they are.

1. True. So it is not appropriate to say “even intellectually”. But It happens often because we are heavily conditioned by K vocabulary and it happens instinctively. Unconsciously we use K as an authority and repeat his words even though we don’t always understand fully at the intellectual level.

2. True. Here seeing and perception are used in the K sense, not in the sense of the layman who uses the term perception in the commonly accepted dualistic sense.

[Twocents]

@James

Krishnamurti stated categorically that nobody had touched the energy he was referring to, nobody has undergone the radical transformation he talked about:

Not entirely clear whether he was referring to people in his organizations or the world at large. But without doubt he knew the enormity of the challenge at the outset in 1929. “If there are 5 people who would listen who would have their faces turned toward eternity…” Forget about living in eternity or touching that energy.

[James]

@Twocents

Unconsciously we use K as an authority and repeat his words even though we don’t always understand fully at the intellectual level.

Yes. This is the danger of being over-familiar with Krishnamurti’s language. One forgets that merely ‘saying’ something does not mean that one has an immediate perception or understanding of the thing being said.

@Twocents

“K: If there are 5 people who would listen who would have their faces turned toward eternity…”

I feel that one can only live what one has seen for oneself, however limited this is. Eternity is such a big word after all. But if one can pay attention in daily life, be awake, aware, alert to the present moment - as much as is possible - then this has its own significance.

[Twocents]

@James

But if one can pay attention in daily life, be awake, aware, alert to the present moment - as much as is possible - then this has its own significance.

Yes. More importantly be aware that we are Not attentive most of the day because we are driven by the firm grip of desire/fear.

[James]

Yes. Attention to inattention.

[BobHearns]

@Twocents

Not attentive most of the day because we are driven by the firm grip of desire/fear.

Do you see that you are in this grip? Do you see that it is creating division and conflict for you? If you see this and you do nothing other than escape, then you are accepting division and conflict in your life, right? Is coming here to talk about it just an escape?

[Inquiry]

@BobHearns

If you see this and you do nothing other than escape, then you are accepting division and conflict in your life, right? Is coming here to talk about it just an escape?

To see something is to look at it with complete attention instead of reacting to it in one’s accustomed way. So, it isn’t possible to actually see something “and do nothing but escape” or react reflexively. The question is whether one can see one’s way of not actually seeing.

[Twocents]

@BobHearns

1. Do you see that you are in this grip?
2. Do you see that it is creating division and conflict for you?
3. then you are accepting division and conflict in your life, right?
4. Is coming here to talk about it just an escape?

1. After the fact as knowledge, not at the moment of action.

2. Yes, theoretically. But division also provides pleasure (pleasure, comfort, security) and not only conflict. So it is a mixture.

3. Of course. In return for pleasure (see above).

4. No. It is ‘what is’. Not somebody else’s (such as K) ‘what is’.

[Inquiry]

@BobHearns

Do you see that you are in this grip?

Only when it’s obvious, undeniable.

Do you see that it is creating division and conflict for you?

Of course.

If you see this and you do nothing other than escape, then you are accepting division and conflict in your life, right?

If one actually sees it, that’s the end of it. But one only knows, acknowledges, that one is in the grip of fear/desire, and knowing is not seeing.

Is coming here to talk about it just an escape?

If one has cancer, is talking about it an escape?

[O7007]

@O7007

“We don’t see the danger of nationalism or the danger of living with fear.”

Do I not see the danger of living with fear?

[O7007]

Living with fear means what? living with confusion and conflict?

[fraggle]

@O7007

Living with fear means what?

Living in constant fear of losing our identity, to which we are so attached…

[fraggle]

@charleycannuck

One does not have this book, nor the means to purchase the book to check if above source is really in Peat book is correct. It may not be… dunno.

The book exists:

Infinite Potential (The Life and Times of David Bohm)
F. David Peat, 1997

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from China-America Digital Academic Library (CADAL) Donated in Memory of Bonnie C. Henzel

Which means you can find it on the Internet

---

The complete paragraph from which the quotation you quote is taken, is this one (p. 299):

In the wake of Krishnamurti’s death, those who had been close to the Indian teacher expressed considerable interest in each other’s consciousness. Was it possible that someone had experienced a “transformation of consciousness”? Shortly before his death the Indian teacher had declared that no one had ever truly understood his teaching; no one besides himself had experienced transformation. There could be no compromise, no partial or provisional transformation. If it occurred at all, it was immediate and total.

Followed by this:

Bohm, for his part, asked himself why transformation had happened to Krishnamurti alone. Who or what had the Indian teacher been? Had Krishnamurti constantly lived in the transformed state of total mental stillness in which the “intelligence” operates? (Krishnamurti once told the neuroscientist Karl Pribram that, during sleep, his brain was totally silent; its cells did not function, and he never dreamed. Or had he slipped in and out of this transformed state, sometimes trapped by conditioning, yet able to sustain an intensity far beyond that available to ordinary people? It was variously said that Krishnamurti was an entirely different order of being, or that he was an empty vehicle used by some transcendent intelligence. To Mary Cadogan, Krishnamurti was simply human, albeit an exceptional teacher of extraordinary intensity, intelligence, and sensitivity.

Bohm believed that people like Newton and Einstein did experience a transformation of consciousness, yet they rapidly fell back into conditioning again. Why, he wondered, had such conditioning not “stuck” with Krishnamurti? Was it something to do with the many childhood illnesses that had left the boy mentally dull? Or had he found the Theosophical teachings to which he had been exposed so absurd that they had no chance of influencing his character as “conditioning”? But then, had Krishnamurti really been free from conditioning? At times he had seemed very much to be trapped by his ego.

Such questions burned for Bohm. If Krishnamurti’s mind had not been fundamentally different from everyone else’s, then he, Bohm, had been hoodwinked and was guilty of naivete. If Krishnamurti’s mind were ordinary, the whole validity of his teaching was called into question. Bohm turned the issue over and over in his mind and finally concluded that he could find no holes in the teachings and no evidence that Krishnamurti was not what he had claimed to be.

Nonetheless, another nagging question remained. Why had no one around Krishnamurti experienced a radical transformation of consciousness? For Bohm, mind is nonlocal; why had the transformation not been passed on? Had none of them been listening properly? Had there been a problem in the way Krishnamurti communicated? Was there something incomplete in the message?

Bohm was now talking with the Dalai Lama…

NOTE: There may be some typographical error, as I have done a copy/paste from the pdf. If so, let me know and I will correct it.

[fraggle]

@BobHearns

Do you see that you are in this grip?

Yes, any addict sees that (s)he have an addiction.

@BobHearns

Do you see that it is creating division and conflict for you?

Yes, any addict sees that (s)he is creating division and conflict, not only towards him/herself, but also for everyone around him/her.

@BobHearns

If you see this and you do nothing other than escape, then you are accepting division and conflict in your life, right?

Who are we to say that what any addict does or does not do because of his/her addiction, means that (s)he is accepting the consequences of his/her addiction?

@BobHearns

Is coming here to talk about it just an escape?

The whole of life is an escape for anyone addicted to self-identity… so what does it matter whether one comes here to escape or not?

After all, one can never escape from oneself unless one ends up with oneself!

[danmcderm]

@fraggle

After all, one can never escape from oneself unless one ends up with oneself!

Could you explain the above fraggle?
I think ‘addiction’ is a good word for the brain’s persistent occupancy by the ‘me and mine’.

[fraggle]

Hi @danmcderm

@danmcderm

Could you explain the above fraggle?

A few days ago I was with a friend of mine. She has colon cancer, but underwent chemo and radiotherapy (needless to say it is a very aggressive treatment for the body… and mind), and apparently she’s clean of it (although every 6 months she needs to have a check-up).

So due to the illness, she is constantly fighting against herself since the path she has travelled with the disease has awakened memories of her past relationships (with herself, parents, siblings, ex-partners, etc… you know what I’m talking about).

So she is constantly travelling back in time, blaming herself for things she did that she would like to fix now but can’t. Because life always sweeps everything away and prevents you from going back to the past because unfortunately the people are no longer there.

As for the present, her vision – even though she is “cured” – is completely negative: due to the after-effects of the treatment making her temporarily dependent (something she considers a weakness), and because of the memories of the past that she cannot change.

As for the future, she has contemplated the possibility of not continuing.

Even so, she sees perfectly where her mind wants to lead her, and although she would like to get rid of it all, her mind says “it is impossible”. So when she needs to share she calls me and we share long deep talks, both of us observing it all over a coffee in any coffee shop. Talks that she told me the last time we met, that she doesn’t share with anyone except me, as the rest of the time she locks herself in her room (she lives with a relative) and doesn’t come out so she doesn’t have to meet people and listen to their (according to her) “false” pity (i.e.: not “true” compassion).

At the last meeting, she said she would like to laugh and joke with me (we laugh and make jokes, but she means laughing and putting sorrows aside), and not always have to talk about all this, because in her mind it is “depressing”. Simply because our talks are merely questions posed – most of the time, by herself – that she herself must look at, and not me, to find an answer to them.

So she is no different from any of us. Living life always escaping from ourselves. Hoping to find a happiness at the end of the road that never comes, and never will until we put an end to the “one” inside us who longs for that happiness so much.

Every human being emanates from a natural loneliness that he never looks at. Simply because he considers it “depressing”. So he prefers to laugh and make jokes with life, thinking that this is how he will live life, without realising that until he contemplates that natural loneliness, until he lives with it as one and not separated from it as we usually do, he will have lived life without living it.

Do you understand now, not only the final part of my post to @BobHearns , but its entirety? … If not, you can keep asking if you wish to do so. I only ask one thing of you and anyone else who wants to comment on this post… this post is NOT to talk about my friend, but about OURSELVES, otherwise (and sorry for saying this) it is better to stay silent.

[danmcderm]

@fraggle

Hoping to find a happiness at the end of the road that never comes, and never will until we put an end to the “one” inside us who longs for that happiness so much.

The ‘one’ is born in childhood when we learn that ‘all this’ has an ending and not a pretty one. Thought early on said “NO!” to ‘death’. That was the beginning of the ‘self’ , the ‘me and mine’, the ‘individual’… the division from the world….it was a misunderstanding, a misstep, a ‘wrong turn’.